First responders arriving on the scene of an accident are relied upon to assess the medical condition of the injured party and may need to evacuate patients as efficiently and with the least patient discomfort as possible. Time can be of the essence, especially when serving at remote locations and/or in adverse conditions.
One difficulty sometimes faced in providing efficient treatment to an injured party on site is the application of bandage wrapping to an injured part of the body. For example, an accident victim lying on the ground may require a bandage to be wrapped around his or her torso or other body part. Conventional techniques for carrying out this task rely entirely on manual manipulation of the bandage, meaning that the responder must manually pass the bandage beneath the patients inured body part between that part and the ground surface behind it. In order to accommodate the respondents' hand, the body part must typically be lifted or otherwise manipulated to create the necessary space between the injured and the surface on which they lie. This movement of the patient may require significant physical effort by the responder, may cause significant discomfort to the patient, may risk aggravation of the patient's injury or injuries, and may be time inefficient if the responder is alone and struggling to simultaneously elevate the body part to be wrapped, manually feed one end of the bandage behind the patient from one side to the other and manually locate and retrieve the bandage from the other side of the patient once sufficiently fed behind him or her.
Accordingly, Applicant has recognized a need for new developments useful in addressing at least of these shortcomings of the prior art bandage wrapping techniques.